ihrjordan wrote:Reductor wrote:
My post was a joke about being addicted to booze verses addicted to adultery, the doing of either being a violation of the five precepts -- in contrast to wanking....
But what is wrong with what I did? Because I personally feel like practice shouldn't be just some sort of hobby you can do on the side I'm the bad guy? I've been told countless times that meditation and the buddhas path is a lifestyle to be cultivated and sooner or later perfected. Because my goals are high and I don't think it's right to give someone false ideas about the benefits and healthiness of masturbation I'm in the wrong?
Jordan,
I'm 31 this month. I've been applying Buddhist teaching to my life for 16 years. There hasn't been a single philosophy or group of practices so important to my life as dhamma, and it is not a hobby. Sometimes I've practiced like a lay monk, other times just enough to keep me on the rails. But I've learned that, as a lay person, I have to apply the teachings in a way that alleviates distress, not compounds it.
I've practice restraint with masturbation, and have practiced meditations to control lust, like the graveyard contemplation and the 32 parts. In fact, the 32 part contemplation was my favorite for quite a while.
Anyway, I know you're meaning well, but you're also showing a lack of experience and consideration for your fellow dhamma practitioners by painting them as hobbiests and as lax simply because they approach this topic differently from you.
Peace.
EDIT: one last point: at points in your posts you seem to suggest masturbation is inherently linked to porn, but it isn't. Porn might always lead to masturbation, but masturbation needn't have any relation to porn. And of the two, porn really is a horrible thing for me, and never appeases any of my lust but only makes me more unhappy. Masturbation doesn't leave me in such sad straights as porn does. And... there we go, I won't go into detail as I don't want to gross people out